


but you do it for her

by sure sure (getoffmysheets)



Series: Red in Tooth and Claw [12]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove Needs Love, Canonical Child Abuse, Daemons, Gen, Harm to Daemons, Max Mayfield: Feral in Training, Maxine "Max" Mayfield Needs a Hug, Pre-Slash, Steve Harrington is a Sweetheart, he will force feed these feral children his love if that's what it takes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22203391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getoffmysheets/pseuds/sure%20sure
Summary: Max has bruises on her shoulder, her arm, but she hides them. Billy could take it, she thinks. Billy took it for so long. She has no right to complain.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington & Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Series: Red in Tooth and Claw [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1508453
Comments: 22
Kudos: 209





	but you do it for her

Pal is hiding in Max’s purse, slung across her shoulders. He’s been in there since this morning before she went to school. At first it was because he wouldn’t come out, but now it’s because he won’t stop shaking. They don’t want the others to see.

She hitches a ride with Dustin and Mike back to Steve’s house, and nobody says anything about it. Nobody says anything until she’s sitting in Steve’s kitchen, playing the most cut-throat game of cards ever encountered with Billy, Will, and El. She knows that Billy cheats, and suspects that Will and Eleven do too, but with their wide-eyed innocent faces, it’s harder to call them out on it.

Brigantia is perched on the counter. She’s so large in comparison to every daemon but Freyja that she’s kind of become a lounging area for the others. Eupraxia is on her shoulder, Nanna resting in her hair, Artemis curled around her hips, and Lempi and Themis scurry around on her lap. She looks around and asks “Where’s Pallas?”

Max supposes that getting used to Brigantia’s Settled form is much easier than it would be for any other daemon. El’s daemon has never really behaved the way any other daemon does, speaking whenever she feels like it, touching any human she pleases – though that’s mostly isolated to Hopper and everyone else in the Byers family. It actually makes sense to the children, in hindsight, that Brigantia would wear El’s face. The way Eleven understands her relationship to herself is different from the way most people do, and her daemon reflects that.

“He’s sleeping,” Max says, laying down her hand. They’re not the only ones who can cheat. It’s not even a lie anymore.

Abruptly, El claps her hand over her ears and glares at Max and hisses, “Stop _shouting_ at me!”

Bewildered, Max says “I’m not shouting. What?”

“Not _out loud_ ,” El accuses grumpily. “But you’re shouting.”

“Shouting what?” Surely…surely the whole room can hear how hard her heart is beating now.

El gestures ambiguously into the air. “Noise. Static. Radio.”

Relieved, Max sinks back into her chair and holds in her wince, conceding “Well, I’ll try to be quieter.”

Max has bruises on her arm, her shoulder, and she’s been hiding them. September is mild, but Max is in long sleeves every single day, and so far nobody has noticed.

Billy could take it, she thinks. Billy _did_ take it for so long. She has no right to complain and she’ll do just about anything to keep this from happening to him anymore.

It’s a bit funny that it took her brother dying for her to really understand him, and now that she has him back, she knows that she needs to keep him away from the house, away from Neil. She knows that if Billy finds out that Neil graduated to hitting her after Billy’s ‘death’, his peaceful rest with Steve will be over.

His love for her used to be an abstract thing that Max would call ‘grudging’ at best, but Billy’s death and return to life gave him a perspective on him that she probably never would’ve had otherwise.

_You were ours. You know that, right? You were always our girl._

He’d never let this happen to her. He would (he did, frequently, she now knows) put himself in Neil’s path first, before ever letting his dad hurt her. And that’s why Max isn’t going to let him find out. He’d spent nearly eighteen years putting up with this. Max could deal with it for less than four.

In the meantime, she’d have to learn not to let her emotions of anxiety and fear consume her whenever she was near El.

\---

Steve was never the brightest student in class, but surely he can’t be the only one who notices that Max is starting to look pale and tired all the time.

He, for the most part, tries to avoid bothering Billy too much – he’s living at the Harrington’s house, so it’s difficult for them to be completely out of each other’s way, but Billy seems like the type of person who likes their space. “Hey…” he asks hesitantly, picking at the leftover pizza once the kids have left. “Uh…does Max seem okay to you?”

Billy pauses in the middle of picking up the boxes. He’s neater than Steve ever was – he wonders if that’s because Billy is just not as much of a slob as he is or if he just feels like he needs to clean up after himself while he’s staying here. Steve doesn’t quite know how tell him he doesn’t need to bother. He isn’t that concerned by a bit of mess and Mrs. Geller comes once a week for pretty much everything but the laundry. “She was…quiet. For Max.”

He says nothing else, but Steve can tell that Billy is uneasy about something. “Are you worried that your dad is giving her a hard time? The way he did with you?”

He jerks his head sharply to look over at him. “And what the hell do you think that fucking means?”

Steve meets his death stare steadily. “Max talked about you a lot, while you were away. She was…really torn up about it. I think she wanted someone to understand why she missed you so much. So, yeah, I know your dad was a real asshole and he hit you sometimes." Hastily, he adds, "Not that I think she realizes that was what was happening, but I can figure some shit out, y'know?"

Billy looks away. He seems embarrassed, “Yeah, he did. A couple times.” They both know Billy is lying through his teeth – it was way more than a couple of times, but Steve’s not a big enough asshole to call him out on it. “You think he’s hitting her too, now?”

“I mean…I don’t know, Billy.” A sick heavy seed of dread sits in his stomach at the idea. “You know them better than I do. We can talk to Hopper, ask him to look in on her it that makes you feel better.”

“No cops,” Billy says immediately, and Freyja’s tail lashes where she sits on her haunches, telling Steve that this is not just a display of anger, he’s getting genuinely upset. “Cops don’t help, Harrington. He’ll beat the shit out of her for tattling on him and play Mr. Nice Guy until the police stop looking.” His fists clench and unclench. “They ain’t gonna find anything on him, and Susan don’t have the guts to tell on his sorry ass, either.”

It sounds to Steve like he was speaking from experience on that. Artie whines and noses at his hand, trying to soothe their unhappiness. “You don’t know Hopper,” he says, darkly amused. “Hopper doesn’t really need evidence – if he really thinks your dad is doing something to Max, he’ll find ways to make his life a living hell whether he can prove it or not.”

Steve has a secret suspicion that Hopper has a soft spot for little girls who find themselves in rough places and need someone to help them. He knew Max personally, but Steve bets he’d do it even if he didn’t.

Billy still looks unsure. “I still don’t want him getting in Neil’s face, like…confronting him or some shit like that. If he thinks Max tattled, he’ll make her pay for it.”

Freyja shudders, plastering herself against Billy’s legs and Steve swallows, nauseated at the naked display of fear. He really, really wishes Billy didn’t sound like everything he was saying came from personal experience. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where the scars along the cougar’s neck came from.

“Let’s figure out if Max needs help before we go causing trouble,” Artie suggests, turning circles around Steve’s legs. He’s less surprised that she’s talking in front of Billy now, and more surprised that Billy doesn’t seem all that shocked about it. “We can make a plan once we’re actually sure she needs us to step in.”

\---

Billy stares at her, silently furious for several long moments, so angry that he physically can’t speak.

Max grins, apparently unaware of the heat of rage Billy is throwing off at her, or willfully ignoring it. “I joined the girls hockey team!” she says eagerly, gesturing at her black eye. “First practice was amazing! I really wish El went to regular school already – she’d be great at it!”

“You expect me to fuckin’ believe that?!” he demands.

She gives him an odd sideways stare. “Why wouldn’t you believe it? I wiped the floor with Stacy Linkhauer!! I thought you’d be proud…”

Max looks so crestfallen, so honestly defeated that Billy instantly feels like a paranoid jackass. He pulls her against his side, chin resting on her head. “I am. I am proud. But you don’t hafta beat the crap outta Stacy for me to be proud ‘a ya.”

“But it was fun,” she says, with a scary smile and a gleam in her eyes.

“Alright, gremlin. Go get Mr. Mom in there to get you some frozen peas for that eye.”

“Do we believe her?” Freyja asks, leaping onto the sofa to nudge his shoulder with her forehead.

“I’m not anymore sure than you are,” Billy finally answers, hiding his face in her neck the way he had when they were barely Settled. In the kitchen, they can hear Steve exclaiming over Max’s eye, then Max’s boasting of her hockey victory.

She doesn’t visit every day, but she is there most of the weekend. Steve doesn’t seem to mind her being around so much. Billy used to wonder why, but then Artemis let him touch her.

Max is part of the fierce fabric of tightly woven armor that makes Steve bold and fearless when he needs to be. All of these weird funny children are. If Steve were a more possessive and controlling person, Billy would say that Max is ‘his’. They don’t mind sharing, not if it’s Steve and Artemis, but Steve doesn’t think of it that way. It’s more like the other way around. They are not _his_ , he is _theirs_. He would die for them, without hesitation or regret, and it makes Billy sick with terror and weak with infatuation all at once.

And now, they are not sure if they want to bring Steve in on this, bring Steve and Artemis into the constant churning fury of the hurricane that is his life. Billy has known he loved him, really loved him, since the Shadow took over his mind and that love was taken away from him, smothered deep down below like his connection to Freyja.

Artemis has given him hope that their love can someday be returned, but Billy’s never really had to think about what that actually _meant_. The idea that Neil could hurt Steve in any way, that Neil would realize Steve was Billy’s boy, the boy his queer son had his equally queer heart set on, made him want to break out in cold sweat. No, they would not be bringing Steve in on their suspicions.

The farther Neil was from Steve, the more at ease Billy would be.

\---

Max’s whole face is throbbing when she picks herself up from the floor.

Her nose is bleeding, but luckily it doesn’t feel broken. Tears spring to her eyes more from the unbearable pressure the blow had placed on her sinuses than the severity of the pain, and she carelessly wipes the blood on her face onto her sleeve.

Pal is hiding on top of a bookshelf, cowering with his ears folded back, gripping the wood with his claws. He abandoned her the moment they heard Neil coming down the hallway. She doesn’t blame him in the slightest.

Freyja’s golden nameplate necklace was never jewelry, it was _armor_ – she’s noticed the pale scars driven into the fur around the front of her neck. The only thing that keeps _Pallas_ safe from Neil’s Doberman daemon is that she can’t ever seem to catch him. He’s not as large a target as Freyja was. (Is.)

In a few minutes, her mother will come in, to babble worthless apologies at her with tears in her eyes. Like all her words actually mean something, in the larger scheme of things. 

If being half-raised by Billy has taught her anything, it’s that a person’s actions matter more than their words. Billy was a manic, a raving psychopath who spouted threats of violence every ten minutes (was…he’s so quiet now, so…broken). But he’d never really done anything harsher to Max than breaking something or grabbing her just a little too hard. He’s also never broken a promise he made to her and never left her to go hungry.

And if he were here right now, he’d never let be happening to her. Suddenly, despite her pain and exhaustion, she is fiercely grateful. Yes, Neil hits her and he yells at her. Yes, she harbors an aching wish that this wasn’t her life right now. But she thinks of how much _worse_ this would be if Billy were really still dead, if on top of all of this, she had to endure it without the comfort of knowing her brother was safe in a too large and too empty house across town.

After all, Max doesn’t even need to be spend much of the weekend at home anyway – her mother thinks she’s spending all of her time at El’s house. She’s pretty sure Susan doesn’t even know where El’s house is. She’s definitely sure that Neil and Susan don’t realize that El lives with the Byers or this would get a hell of a lot more hard to pull off.

Even if no one else in town knows about Will’s gender swap, since that’s really only something she can do safely in private, the Byers are sort of known for being the town weirdos, which is something Max finds equal parts fascinating and marvelous. For all that they have to be the strangest family she’s ever met, Max wouldn’t trade knowing them for anything.

Max rubs at her face and looks in the mirror, before reaching for the makeup sitting on her vanity.

Neil is beginning to get careless, leaving marks on her face this way.

“I’m sorry,” Pal says, ears flat against his skull. He still hasn’t got the courage to climb down from the bookshelf. She knows just how he feels.

“It’s okay,” Max replies, smearing foundation on to cover up the bruising. “It was the best place for you to be anyway.”

\---

Billy wants to be angry, he wants to reach for it so bad. But it’s not there. He searches and searches, but for the first time in his life, the rage so readily waiting for him is just…gone. He feels hollowed out and terrified.

Does Max really not think he doesn’t notice the bloodstains smeared on the inside of her sleeve? Or how Freyja can never seem to find Pallas nowadays? He always seems to be ‘sleeping’ in her purse. She spends all weekend with him over at Steve’s house, which supposes he can understand, Billy wouldn’t wanna spend all weekend cooped up with Neil and Susan either, not while the rest of his friends got to go back to their happy homes.

Not that he can call Steve’s home _happy_ , exactly. It’s nearly Halloween and Billy has been in this house for over two months, but Billy’s never seen either one of Steve’s parents, and not because they work late and get up early – he’s pretty sure that they just literally are not ever home. Billy’s not sure how long Steve’s been left alone, but it’s been like…a while. A long while.

He’s tried asking round about questions but quickly stopped when he realized that though Steve was as bland and noncommittal as he ever was, Artemis began getting antsy and anxiously wiggly whenever Billy got anywhere near the subject of his parents. He still doesn’t understand how Steve doesn’t seem to realize when he’s getting upset.

Billy wonders how long Neil has been hitting Max, how long she’s been hiding it, but when the moment comes, he can’t find it within himself to ask her, to confront her about it. He feels paralyzed with fear as Max says goodbye and Steve leaves with her to take her home.

What should he do? Steve wanted to call Hopper, but Billy don’t trust cops. They don’t do shit but make everything fuckin’ worse, in his experience. They won’t arrest Neil, and then Neil will take it out on Billy for tattling. The same old song and dance it’s always been, only now Billy will be Max.

Freyja is terrified and worried. “We have to go back,” he tells her, trying to feign ease because if he lets himself be scared shitless, he’ll never have the courage to do what had to be done. “If I let her go back to that knowing what he’ll do to her, I’m no better than he is. It’s barely any different than hitting her myself.”

“I’m with you,” Freyja promises, though they were both aching at the thought of leaving Steve and Artemis to go back to that house. “We can-we can still see them sometimes, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure,” he says, lying to both of them through his teeth just to comfort himself. Neil can’t know Steve is his boy. He wouldn’t wish Neil Hargrove on anyone, but definitely not on his brave boy and his little Artemis. Thrúd, Neil’s Doberman, would tear his sweet huntress to pieces.

Freyja shakes and yowls at the memory of those sharp teeth clamping around her neck, Neil’s hands grabbing at her ears and twisting until her poor Billy wept with pain and terror at such a harsh violation. No, they won’t be letting that happen to Artemis and Steve.

\---

Her eye feels like it’s about to come out of the goddamn socket. Max knows better than to talk back, she knew not to talk back even to Billy – but the only consequences with Billy were some of her stuff getting broken, or him being extra snappish with her, for an hour or for a day depending on his mood. But when Neil’s drunk, he starts to complain about what a trying pain in the ass his dead son used to be and how Max needs to stop acting like him, and that just gets her temper up. Neil has no idea that Billy is alive, and Max won’t stand for his memory being smeared that way.

And she’s in the right, anyway, though that hardly seems to matter. He was (is) only half-tame, but he’d provided, protected, and imparted the lessons he deemed most important for her to know. If Neil didn’t think he was doing an adequate job, he’d had the power to step in anytime he’d felt like it.

Max, because her temper is already alive and breathing tongues of hot fire, says exactly that. She rubs the blood from her nose, feeling like El but not in a good way. The sneer on her face feels like Billy, and it makes her feel dangerously powerful and confident. Everyday she understands him more, and every day, she’s more sure she’s making the right choice. “If he was such a piece of shit, then where were you when he was raising me?” Her teeth are bloody from a split lip – shit, she may not be able to see Billy for days. It only makes her madder. “Where were you, while he did everything for me?”

“You’re my daughter, and you’ll speak to me with respect, Maxine,” he snarls. Pallas yowls and hisses as Neil grabs her tightly by the hair.

“I’m not _your_ daughter,” Max hisses defiantly, twisting away from him despite the pain it’s causing her. “If I’m anyone’s, I’m _Billy’s_.”

“Not hardly, shitbird.”

Her body, struggling against Neil’s grip before, goes numb, her arms flopping uselessly like dead weight. She’s hardly even able to savor Neil’s chalk-faced surprise at being confronted with his dead son. Freyja rumbles a low challenging growl and Billy says, “Let her go.”

Rather dumbly, Neil says, “You’re dead.”

“Apparently not,” he answers wryly, gesturing at his own walking talking form. Eyes hard, he repeats, “Let Maxine go.”

Max whines as Neil tightens his grip on her hair that much more. It feels like he’s on the verge of tearing it out. “Seems like wherever you’ve been, you’ve already forgotten respect,” he spits, and the lines around Billy’s eyes tighten as he watches Max squirm in helpless, terrified pain. “You watch the way you talk to me, boy.”

“Don’t call me boy,” Billy retorts and Freyja lashes out, claws catching on Thrúd’s pointed snort.

Neil flinches as the flash of pain, and his grip on Max gets just loose enough for her to bolt away from him.

“Go to your room,” Billy says, without taking his eyes from his father. Freyja tries to nudge insistently at Max’s legs, not skin to skin contact but as close she thinks they’ve ever come. She’s frozen to the spot, though, even with Freyja’s forceful shoves. “NOW, Maxine.”

“I-I can’t,” she says weakly, though that’s all she watches to do. Her stomach feels tight and sick. Her head really hurts now too, and her eyes are stinging, though Neil’s never made her really cry before. She’s done everything in her power to keep this from happening, but now that it has, all Max really wants is for her big brother to come and save her.

Freyja pushes harder, shoving her in the direction of the hall while keeping herself between Max and Neil. Thrúd growls and lunges – Max can practically feel Freyja shuddering before her teeth even clamp down, fangs digging into the pale and silver-tipped pelt that became her fur after Billy’s month in the Upside Down. She hears Billy inhale sharply in pain, and then everything becomes a strange blur.

There’s a loud crashing sound on the opposite side of the room, Neil starts screaming – enraged howls of agony at the top of his voice – and then, someone is yelling her name. “Max, grab the phone!” Steve shouts, as Artie hangs onto Thrúd’s neck for dear life. “Hurry! Call Hopper!”

Billy’s sobs, clutching Freyja’s bloody fur in disbelief as he watches Steve force Neil away with nothing but Artie and the very judicious use of a phonebook to the face. Thrúd thrashes out of the Aussie’s jaws, blood spattering the walls and floor.

Artemis is growling so forcefully that her whole body seems to vibrate with the sound, never backing down, jaws opened wide and teeth bared as she says “Do. Not. Touch. Her. Again”, though it’s unclear if she’s referring to Max or Freyja – perhaps both.

“Who the fuck are you?!” Neil splutters.

Steve’s expression is no longer mild, but rather than looking scared or reflecting Artie’s savagery, his dark eyes are hard and focused, intense. He doesn’t bother to answer verbally – Artemis charges again, she and Thrúd locked into a snarling, snapping mass of blood and teeth and fur.

They are still snarling and snapping when a large shadow falls over Billy and the most enormous dog he’s ever encountered in person drags Thrúd away from Artemis by the neck.

“Hawkins Police,” Hopper says with a gimlet stare at Neil that doesn’t bode well for Neil’s night. “We received a call about a domestic disturbance, but I guess I don’t really need to ask why.”

“O-officer, this was really a misunderstanding,” Susan says, mouth trembling. She isn’t the slightest bit convincing. No one had even noticed her there.

  
Max threw her mother a deeply disgusted look that silenced any other defenses. She had apparently witnessed all or part of this scene and only found it fit to intervene to get her husband out of trouble. She hadn’t thought she could despise her mother’s cowardice any more than she already did.

Not giving an inch, Andy prowls around the room as Hopper examines the scene before him. Artemis has hardly a scratch on her, but Freyja is bleeding from punctures along her face and sides, and Max’s face must be a patchwork quilt of blood, cuts, and bruises because she can see the grim light of Knowing in Hopper’s eyes when he sees her.

She hides her face in Billy’s shoulder, still shivering with fear.

“Seems you don’t treat your kids too well, Mr. Hargrove.”

\---

Max is already asleep. Billy should go find another room - Steve's house never seems short on empty rooms waiting for someone to live in them - but he can't quit bring himself to go. Her hands haven't let go of his jacket since the moment Hopper stalked into his father's house. 

He jumps when Steve opens the door, twitchier than he's been since he got out of the Upside Down. Steve noticed. "Sorry," he says sheepishly "I-"

Artemis doesn't allow him to finish whatever thought he's trying to express. The Aussie leaps up beside Freyja on the bed, whining and licking urgently at her ears. Billy tries and fails not to blush. Irritated and embarrassed, Steve grabs her by the scruff of the neck and hauls her away. "Stop that, for fuck's sake. She doesn't need you jumping on her and getting your drool all over her."

Artie visibly wilts.

"She is-she is okay where she was," Freyja says abruptly, shy about raising her voice in front of Steve.

Their hearts beat quicker when his eyes meet hers for just a moment, before he looks away. It's the polite thing to do, but Billy finds himself helplessly wishing that he was a little more rude.

Reluctantly, Steve drops Artie back onto the bed, giving her fur a bit of a tug and hissing, "Behave yourself."

She whines pitifully, tucking herself along Freyja's back and licking her wounds with a bit less frenzy this time. Billy's ear feel hot.

"My knight in shining armor," he drawls, missing his mark of teasing and sounding as sheepish as Steve. "How did you know?"

Steve fidgets, sitting on the edge of the bed. He rubs the back of his neck, idly reaching out to stroke Artie's fluffy tail, his fingers skimming so close to Freyja's fur that she quivers. Billy struggles to keep his breaths even. "I'm not _that_ dumb, you know. I saw her face when I dropped her off." There's an uncomfortable silence, where he continues his compulsive stroking of the dog daemon's tail. "She thinks you'd do anything for her, y'know. I couldn't imagine you going anywhere else."

Billy grunts, embarrassed to be so caught out, and realizes that his fingers have twisted through the red waves of Max's. Against her back, Pal whimpers, ears twitching anxiously. Freyja stirs to pick him up, but before she can make her painful way up from her place, Steve reaches forward and Billy finds himself holding his breath as he scoops Pal into his arm.

Max never stirs, wheezing quietly through the bruising to her nose and face. She had to sit through hours of telling her story to Hopper and then child services, taking photos of the damage Neil had done to her face. Her arms. Shoulders. Back. He has temporary custody of her, even though he's technically dead, because he also doesn't technically live with Neil and Susan anymore. Billy tightens his other arm around her as much as he dares, feeling sick with himself. How could he have let Neil do this to her?

"S'okay buddy," Steve breathes, cradling Pal in his arms the way he might hold a baby. A large hand gently strokes the caracal's face, where the worst of her bruises are, and Artie makes a soft sad sound that Billy hates instantly. "S'okay."

Billy falls asleep with Steve laying across from him, still cradling Pallas to his chest. They stare at each other silently in the semi-darkness, Artie laying protectively at Freyja's back. He feels those focused eyes on him, and Billy lets his own eyes close, feeling utterly naked beneath that stare.

Letting himself be naked and just breathing in the moment. He feels like Steve is seeing through him in a way no other person ever has, maybe not even his own mom.

Vulnerable.

He falls asleep, and Freyja begins to purr. 

Steve smiles into Pal's fur and pets him gently. Max's bruises are a dull pain that radiates all over her body, but he figures if she can endure it, he can bear it with her. (Them.)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I'm pretty sure that the Billy/Steve get together is in the next part of the series, but dont think we're done with everybody else. Hope you've enjoyed it!


End file.
